


The Art of Good Timing

by Kemmasandi



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Dubious Alien Biology, Mammalian Birth, Other, graphic birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2100447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kemmasandi/pseuds/Kemmasandi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ratchet and Optimus get knocked up and go into labour at the same time...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Good Timing

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive the weak-ass summary, no can brain today.

THE ART OF GOOD TIMING

There were some situations at which one just had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. What were the odds?

Ratchet braced Optimus' shoulders as the Last Prime eased himself down onto the delivery berth. He slipped a roughly-made mesh pillow behind Optimus' lower back as bracing, then packed a thermal blanket around Optimus' shoulders.

“Is that comfortable?” he asked.

Optimus nodded solemnly. His servos cupped his round protruding belly, digits tapping idly against the plating. “Very much so.”

“Good,” said Ratchet. He extended a jack from his wrist socket. “Ventral panel, now. Let's get her out of you.”

There were smiles from the open door, where the rest of Team Prime gathered. Ratchet had set up the medbay as a makeshift delivery room earlier that morning, shutting it off from the rest of the old silo for privacy. For now, though, the last of the folding walls had yet to be put into place. Everyone was free to come and go as they wished.

Optimus folded away his ventral interface panel, watching with bright optics as Ratchet connected to the medical access socket.

Wheeljack, on the other side of the berth, looked a little nervous. And if that wasn't the most ill-fitting expression on the daredevil Wrecker, then Ratchet would eat his own exhaust pipe.

He flipped through Optimus' gestational histories. The Prime had – fortunately – had an easy time of it. Optimus, a first-time carrier, hadn't recognised the symptoms of pregnancy until he'd been more than halfway through the cycle. It helped that he hadn't had many: no nausea, few realignment pains, no difficulty transforming.

Ratchet glanced down at his own swollen belly. Oh yes, the universe had a sense of humour all right.

He found the emergence protocols, sitting inert in the back of Optimus' gestational mechanics. Optimus had reached full-term several weeks ago, and at first he had been content to let his daughter emerge on her own terms – and if Ratchet knew him somewhat loathe to interfere with systems working as Primus had intended them. Decepticon activity had recently become more frequent, however, making such path of action a risky operation.

Ratchet triggered the emergent sequence. He watched Optimus' coding go to work for a moment, just to make sure everything was proceeding as it should, then withdrew.

Optimus frowned up at the ceiling. “Should I be feeling anything?”

“Not yet,” Ratchet explained. “It varies from mech to mech, but you should be feeling it within an hour or two. Birth is a long process.”

“I see.”

His optics flickered, shifting across to Ratchet. Optimus smiled, absolutely trusting. “Thank you, old friend.”

“Funny sort of friends you are now,” Wheeljack observed, to giggles from the human girl on the communications deck behind him.

“We don't comment on _your_ sex life,” Ratchet rejoindered, far too used to the Wrecker's quips to react with more than a rolled optic. “Or lack thereof.”

Miko's eyes went round, and after a moment, so did her mouth. “Oooh,” she sang, hanging over the railing. “Shots fired!”

It had taken a while for the humans to get used to the idea of their alien robot friends reproducing. Miko had probably taken it the best, jumping in feet-first as she did with everything in life. They'd just figured out how to handle Ratchet's rapidly-growing passenger when the discovery of Optimus' own pregnancy had thrown them into turmoil all over again. Apparently the mental gymnastics involved in reconciling their idea of Ratchet with pregnancy, despite the pronouns he'd taken, were far easier.

“'Cause you're such a mama hen!” Miko had said once. Ratchet had conceded the point, but only in the privacy of his own mind.

Optimus shifted on the berth. His hands drifted down to the shallow round bump at his lower abdomen. “Ah,” he said. “It feels like a... pulling? Quite low down.”

“You're on the way,” Ratchet told him. “Prepare yourself.”

* * *

Six hours later, and Ratchet was again helping Optimus up onto the delivery berth. “There you go – lie back, that's it. Knees apart, let's see how you're doing.”

Optimus obeyed, though somewhat less than promptly. He tucked his legs up out of Ratchet's way, servos around his ankles. Ratchet leant over the end of the berth and performed a quick pelvic exam.

It didn't look like it was going to be a quick birth. Six hours of slow, testing contractions and Optimus was barely dilated.

He shifted uncomfortably on the berth as Ratchet withdrew his fingers. His valve was just beginning to produce thick white lubricant in preparation for the birth. Generally this was a sign that things were beginning to happen inside the carrier's frame.

 _Took you long enough,_ Ratchet thought pointedly.

Wheeljack made a face at the white traces on Ratchet's fingers. “What in the Pit is that?”

Optimus craned his helm up to see, so Ratchet wiggled his fingers at them both. “It's lubricant.”

“I'm pretty intimately acquainted with lubricant and that ain't it,” Wheeljack said. The wavelength of his field was more incredulous than denying, so Ratchet let the words slide without pointing out just who was the doctor here, thankyouverymuch.

“It is; it's just extra-strength, as it were.” He wiped the digits on one of the damp towels he'd had the rest of the team preparing, then washed his hands. “It's a carbon-based substance rather than an energon byproduct, which is why it looks different. Ordinary bodily lubricants are sufficient for intercourse, but the process of giving birth is rather more arduous, meaning we need something a little hardier.”

“Carbon, huh?” Wheeljack adopted a thoughtful look. “Sounds like fun to synthesize.”

“Not in my laboratory,” Ratchet shot back immediately.

There was the sound of heavy steps, and Bulkhead poked his helm around the makeshift partition wall. “How're you guys going?” he asked. “Need any more towels? Only Miko's getting a bit antsy with nothing to do.”

Optimus sat up, with visible effort, and swung his legs over the side of the berth. He shuttered his optics until the contraction passed, then said, “They are coming roughly eight minutes apart.”

“We're fine, thank you.” Ratchet put his hands on either side of Optimus' waist, rubbing up and down in soothing motions. “You're forty percent dilated – still a way to go, unfortunately. Do you want to walk around some more?”

Optimus vented slowly. “Yes, I believe I might.” He stood without assistance, slowly but steadily. Ratchet watched him return to the main room, Wheeljack following.

The twinge of a cramp, low down in his pelvic girdle, was unexpected. Ratchet bit his glossa, counting several slow seconds before it eased.

He frowned down at his swollen belly. His own due date wasn't for another few months. This was not long in Cybertronian terms – certainly well within the ballpark figure for a full-term carriage.

Another cramp.

“Please don't do this to me,” he whispered fiercely. “I have far more important things to be worrying about.”

It subsided with bad grace. His unborn daughter kicked and squirmed, her tiny spark fluttering with what Ratchet imagined was impatience.

Sparklings' processors were not active prior to birth; their systems were supplied and managed by their carriers'. The trauma of birth was what switched them on, so to speak, forcing their systems to become self-sufficient. Their movements in the gestation chamber were simply the result of their tiny motor systems making and testing connections in autonomic protocols; hardly symptoms of a wakening personality.

Ratchet had carried before, however, and he'd sworn up and down that he'd known each of his sons' tempers before they had emerged.

He waited a few moments to be sure the cramps had gone, then headed out into the main silo in search of Optimus.

* * *

“This brings back a lot of memories,” June Darby observed. Her grey eyes were fixed on Optimus, following him as he paced back and forth across the silo floor.

“Hm?” Ratchet glanced back at her. “Good memories?”

She made a face. “Certainly not bad, but – it definitely depends on what you include as 'good'.”

Ratchet nodded, eminently able to empathise.

June gave a neat shrug, and continued with a faint smile on her lips. “That said, he's far more composed than I ever was. Maybe a benefit of being a Prime.”

“I'd say it's more a benefit of being Optimus,” observed Ratchet. “He's never exactly been given to panic.”

Optimus reached the far corner, beside the ground bridge gate. Instead of turning back immediately to repeat his path he lifted his servos and pressed the heels of his palms into his lower back, venting heavily.

“I definitely remember that,” said June, her smile growing.

“It is fascinating, sometimes, how similar our biological mechanisms are for such vastly separate species,” Ratchet admitted. “Though sometimes part of that fascination is tempered with relief that certain differences do exist between us.”

June cut him a sidelong look, amused. She'd spent several afternoons a year ago mapping out those differences in their respective reproductive systems with Ratchet. This had been highly enlightening, and had left Ratchet with a newfound appreciation for the mineral nature of his composition and the greater efficiency of systems created by intelligent design. Evolution had done incredible things for the creatures of Earth, but it had also come up with some that were downright horrifying.

Hemochorial placentas, for example. Yaargh.

Optimus shifted, and his face became visible to those watching. His optics were closed, and his mouth taut in discomfort.

“Are you all right, Optimus?” called Arcee from the mezzanine stairs.

“I am fine,” the Last Prime said, turning fully. He opened his optics and slipped into the same easy, looping path he had been following. “I find the contractions coming harder and more often than they had been.”

“About how often would you say?” Ratchet asked.

Optimus tilted his helm in thought. “Perhaps every five minutes.”

He'd hit sixty percent dilation at just after seven PM. Ratchet resolved to check again in another twenty minutes or so.

The silo lapsed into near-quiet, broken only by the sirens and explosions of the action movie the kids were watching, and the sound of Optimus' steady pacing.

Ratchet folded his arms, leant back against the wall, and settled in for a few more minutes of Prime-watching.

It wasn't long before Optimus stopped again, a strange expression flashing over his face. His EM field flared, surprise rather than pain.

“Optimus?” Ratchet asked.

Optimus went completely still. His weight subtly moved forward until he balanced on the tips of his pedes, his servos opening out as if to grip the air. “I... am fine. I think.”

“You think?” Ratchet asked – calmly, no need to frighten him – and pushed off from the wall. “What do you feel?”

Optimus' mouth twisted upward in an unguarded grimace. “Liquid, perhaps? It feels very strange.”

Ratchet smiled inwardly, gathering Optimus' servos in his. “That does sound like something I was expecting. Do you want me to take a look?”

Optimus was already moving toward the medbay. “It would not go amiss.”

Ratchet stumped after him. “I think it's amniotic fluid,” he said. “In most emergences the remnant is drained prior to birth into internal waste conversion systems as part of the autonomic emergent process, but in a small percentage it escapes via the valve. There is no health risk associated with it, for either carrier or sparkling.”

For most Cybertronians, their only experience with sudden internal leakage would be injury. No wonder Optimus had been discomfited.

Optimus grunted as he reached the berth, racked with a new wave of contractions. He braced his servos against the surface and snapped his valve panel open. A small trickle of yellow liquid washed down the inside of his thigh.

“It feels like more than there generally is,” Ratchet said helpfully. “It looks fine to me. Can you bend forward over the berth?”

Optimus obliged, with another small grunt. Evidently the contractions were getting to him.

“That's good, that's good. I'm going to give you an internal scan, to see how things are moving inside of you.” Ratchet gently pressed Optimus' legs further apart, and wiped away the amniotic fluid with a wet towel. Then he positioned the scanning wand at Optimus' entrance and carefully slid it into his channel.

It would help if they'd managed to invent a non-invasive method before the war sent everything to scrap, he mused, but Cybertronian internals were a complicated mess of parts at the best of times. It was one of the few things human carriers had it easier with.

He took one look at the results and commed Wheeljack. :: _Get in here._ ::

The Wrecker arrived with great alacrity. He paused to slide the final screen into place over the entrance, and took his place on the other wise of the berth without so much as a smartaft comment.

Ratchet removed the scanning wand from Optimus' channel and wiped it on the towel.

Optimus' vents were running shallow, his frame suddenly hot to the touch. His elbows locked, his helm hanging, mouth open, dragging in new air through his secondary vents.

“Ninety percent and going fast,” Ratchet called. “Help me get him onto the berth.”

He and Wheeljack somehow managed to half-lift, half-push Optimus into place. Once he was there, his processor seemed to come back from whichever pained place it had been sent. He rolled onto his back, his helm lolled back against the raised headrest, and he gave a rumbling bass groan as his abdominal components flexed visibly.

“That was quick as slag,” Wheeljack said. “He ain't been in here five minutes.”

“That happens, sometimes,” Ratchet said. He stroked Optimus' clenched servo. “Optimus, you're in what we call the transition phase. Do not push, not yet. Just let your body roll with the contractions. Can you do that for me?”

Optimus' optics flickered on. They focused dimly on Ratchet, and he nodded.

“All right.” Ratchet stepped back – and an invisible hand gripped his lower abdomen, and _squeezed._

He made an undignified noise. Optimus, deep in the throes of another contraction, didn't notice, but Wheeljack gave him a strange look.

Ratchet concentrated on keeping his expression as straight as possible. The pressure eased as suddenly as it had come, leaving him weak and shocked. He blinked a few times, processing the pain.

It... could be nothing. False labour was documented phenomenon. Ratchet hadn't previously experienced it, but there was always a first time, wasn't there?

He clung to that hope, and set about making sure they had everything they needed to deliver Optimus' sparkling.

* * *

His back hit the wall and the solid thunk juddered through his systems, the cold concrete giving him a sensation to focus on other than the dull but powerful ache rippling through his abdomen.

Ratchet opened his optics as it faded, drew in a shallow vent.

How typical. How absolutely scrap-fraggin' typical. He should have seen this coming as soon as Optimus had come into his berthroom that one night, wide-opticked and shocked, telling Ratchet that there was something _moving_ inside him and he couldn't possibly be pregnant as well, could he?

He folded away his valve panel and slid to the floor, spreading his legs wide. Optics closed, he felt for his entrance and pushed two fingers into himself. It was uncomfortable in an immediately forgettable way, compared to the fading press of the contraction still gripping his lower body. His channel was already drawn short, and it got looser the deeper he went.

He crooked his fingers and found his cervical valve. It was already well dilated.

Ratchet withdrew his fingers. Again they were coated in thick white lubricants. He struggled to his feet and shut his panel, wiping his fingers on the wall. Not entirely hygienic, but he didn't have anything better to hand.

Optimus' deep bellows of pain echoed through the little storeroom, reminding him of the triple-X grade painkiller chips he'd come looking for.

Ratchet pressed this knuckles against his lower back and sighed through gritted dente. Now where had he put it? He hadn't had to use anything stronger than X-negative in a long time.

He pulled open the cupboards and riffled through the boxes of odds and ends stored within. Enforced leave from active duty had left him with plenty of time to restock their supply of the various one-use chips and codes a cadre of warriors, no matter how small, went through as a matter of course.

His hands jerked under another contraction, spilling a box of contraceptive plugins and kindle kits. Oh, the irony.

The next drawer yielded a box of double-X chips. Not quite what he'd been looking for, but Optimus would probably appreciate it anyway.

Ratchet braced himself against the bench, counted to twelve, and hurried out into the medbay.

Optimus laid on his back, his knees drawn up and his mouth open, gasping through his secondary intake vents. He was silent for the moment but for the noisy whirr of his ventilator fans.

Ratchet reached the berth, and if he leant on the side a little heavier than he usually would have, no-one else was paying attention.

“How are you doing, Optimus?” he asked.

Optimus' shuttered optics creaked open, near-white with exertion. “Well enough,” he groaned. “Or so I believe.”

Wheeljack, perched on the edge of the berth, passed Ratchet a datapad. It had been plugged into Optimus' lower medical port, and windows on the screen showed the progress of the parturition sequence. Optimus was well into active birth.

“Yes, you're coming along nicely,” Ratchet said, scrolling through the readouts. Optimus' internal mechanisms reported that they were facing unprecedented strain and medical attention would be much appreciated; the cervical valve was fully dilated and the pressure of the sparkling's helm moving through the aperture was climbing high enough that Ratchet looked up and scanned the medbay for the chain device he'd made, just in case.

Although Optimus' pregnancy had gone so smoothly that Ratchet wholly thought he ought to be jealous, the intersection of several factors was making his experience with giving birth entirely miserable.

Ratchet lowered himself to his knees beside the berth and gently stroked Optimus' helm. Optimus' engine hiccuped and his dente gritted hard as his body fought itself to bring their daughter into the world.

Optimus was a first-time carrier – a primi-gravida, to use the term the Academy of Medical Mechanics favoured. Thus he had had to approach both pregnancy and birth blind, with no prior data or experience to draw upon. This was a frightening prospect for any new parent, let alone one who was obligated to lead an army into war.

Furthermore, his own frametype complicated things. Optimus was an aegis dexter, narrow-hipped by nature. The dexters' warbuild code-blueprint inheritance gave him a strong, compact core, a boon in combat, but one prone to causing problems during carrying. Narrow hips meant a narrow maximum cervical valve aperture. The compact core gave the sparkling very little room to occupy. And Ratchet had already observed an internal cable snapping under the stress.

He pinged Wheeljack for attention. :: _Keep a close watch on his external valve mechanisms. I want to know the moment you see anything._ ::

Despite his earlier misgivings, Wheeljack obeyed with alacrity. :: _Will do, Doc._ ::

Between contractions, Optimus turned his face into Ratchet's hand. His features were drawn and tight, his optics shuttered, his lips parted as he gasped for air. His EM field lashed the air around them, blazing with pain, though the edges were muted with iron determination.

“You're doing amazingly well,” Ratchet murmured, stroking his audial with gentle fingertips. “I'm so proud of you.”

Optimus' optics cracked open. Somehow he managed to convey a smile without moving his mouth at all.

“I love you, old friend,” he said.

Fresh contractions contorted the end of the sentence into a deep, sparkfelt groan, but Ratchet heard it well enough. His spark leapt, and even through the gathering strain of his own contractions he found the energy to smile and reach down the berth to take Optimus' hand and intertwine their fingers.

He opened his mouth to reply, and the contraction chose there and then to hit.

Ratchet groaned, rocking forward on his pedes. He braced his shoulders against the side of the med-berth and lowered his helm until his forehelm pressed against the mesh surface. His entire lower body rippled and squeezed, pain washing through his neural net. Again he counted to twelve. The pain slowly withdrew.

“Ratchet?” Optimus' voice asked. Ratchet heard it distantly, as though Optimus was speaking through an old-fashioned radio.

He sounded concerned, like he'd asked a question and not received an answer.

Ratchet opened his optics. Optimus wasn't the only one staring; Wheeljack looked like he'd seen a nest of scraplets.

“That better not be what I think I'm seeing,” the Wrecker demanded. Ratchet didn't think he'd ever seen optics that wide on anyone short of scout-tailored optical suites. It was almost amusing.

“In my defence I never saw this coming,” Ratchet croaked. He reset his vocaliser until he sounded merely pack-a-day-smoker rather than jet-fuel-hangover. “Yes, I'm in labour as well. Fifty-seven percent dilated.”

“Oh,” said Optimus. Faintly, optics dimming in shock.

Wheeljack shook his helm as if to reject the fact. His lips moved in silent prayer, or more likely profanity.

Optimus' servo tightened around Ratchet's. Ratchet blinked, and the moment of shock seemed to have passed; Optimus gazed at him with optics sharp with concern.

“Will you be all right? I'm rather pinned down on here and there isn't another berth in the room.”

Ratchet managed a wan smile. “I'll be fine. I gave birth on my hands and knees last time. I preferred it to being flat on my back, actually.”

Optimus looked like he was going to argue, but the groaning twisting-metal sound of an almighty contraction sent him into an agonized arch and a bellow that echoed around the rafters. His grip on Ratchet's servo turned painful.

“I've got something!” Wheeljack reported. “Can't really tell what it is, though.”

He sent a databurst with a video file; Ratchet opened it and beheld a short clip of Optimus' valve as it spiralled wide and the glimpse of a protoform-silver mass still quite deep inside him. Ratchet rewatched it – the valve passage was shortening as it ought to, the cervical valve coming forward proportionally within Optimus' pelvic frame.

He levered himself to his feet, and found he had no strength left with which to clamber onto the berth.

He stuck a hand in Wheeljack's general direction. “Help me up.”

Wheeljack grabbed his wrist and shoulder and pulled. He managed to get a leg onto the berth, grabbing hold of Optimus' knee for stability. There he would have stayed, half on and half off, if Wheeljack hadn't suddenly found a fresh well of proactivity and headed around the berth to push him on from the other side.

Ratchet found himself kneeling again, servos braced on the berth between Optimus' splayed legs.

“Wet towel,” he ordered, closing his optics and hissing through his vents as his own contractions thundered on. “Scanning wand. Make that a handful of wet towels. And a dry one.”

Optimus' chassis heaved, his abdominal armour visibly pulling tight. He moaned with every new exvent. Ratchet lowered his helm and caught a glimpse of the sparkling, their daughter, between the pulsing, swollen walls of his outer valve.

Wheeljack returned with the implements asked for. Ratchet gently dabbed a wet towel around Optimus' valve and groin, wiping away the older fluids.

“You're nearly there,” he told Optimus, pitching his voice low and gentle. “She's going to crown in a moment, just a few more pushes. Exvent slowly and take another deep breath as you feel the contractions beginning, like we talked about earlier.”

He spread another towel on the berth between Optimus' legs, then shuffled back almost to the edge of the berth and turned aside. “Wheeljack, I need you to scan me. I need to know how close I am.”

“Right, right,” said Wheeljack. As Ratchet dropped to his elbows, he heard the Wrecker mutter, “I never signed up for this.”

“Too bad,” Ratchet said, and gave a short laugh. He felt Wheeljack's hands at his valve and then the cold metallic intrusion of the scanning wand. “This is what medicine is. Things happening exactly when it's least convenient.”

“I gotta say, Ratchet, I've got a whole lot more respect for what you do now.”

The scanner beeped. “Ninety-seven percent,” Wheeljack reported. “Why's it going so much faster for you?”

“I'm not a first-timer,” Ratchet said as the wand was withdrawn. He didn't bother closing his panel this time; what would be the point? “My body knows what to do and how to do it. Optimus' is still trying to figure that out.”

Optimus screamed again, arching involuntarily. A rush of fluid, tinged blue with energon, flowed out of his valve. Suddenly the mass of the sparkling was far closer than it had been. Optimus' entrance stretched wide around a round helm. The contraction kept going. Small tears appeared in his perineal mesh, and lengthened. He'd need staples, Ratchet noted with a distant sort of sympathy.

Head and shoulders were the worst part. After that, it would be plain sailing.

Ratchet raised himself on hands and knees, groaning as a contraction gripped him in an iron fist. Any moment now he would have to push. He wanted so badly to see his daughter born, but the odds were low that his own body would let him.

“Support her head as her shoulders emerge, and gently ease her out after that,” he ordered Wheeljack, gasping between words. “If you have to pull, don't. She should come, but it's not unheard of for support cables and placental tubes to take a while to release from the carrier's endometrial mass.”

He lost Wheeljack's reply under the roaring pain of birth.

He was never sure, later, of how he managed to get down off the med-berth. His sensory awareness drew back to the concrete floor under his knees and the edge of the berth in his servos, and the pain raging through his pelvic girdle. It ebbed and washed through his neural net, but never let up.

Ratchet pressed his forehelm to the side of the berth, and _pushed._

Part of it was familiar. He remembered in an unconscious sort of way the hospitals he'd given birth to his sons in, the warm light and the warmth of his families around him.

Some time later, he felt Wheeljack's presence at his back, and the Wrecker's hands between his legs, catching his daughter's weight as she emerged from his body.

She did not immediately cry, and cold fear raced through Ratchet's spark as the second stretched on and on. But her spark was bright and strong as she was placed in his hands, and her optics were open. She latched onto his offered feeding line as soon as he'd opened his chest.

He sobbed with relief, exhaustion written through every part of him, rattling his fans and drawing strength from the sight of her, tucked up into the hollow of his core. She was his mirror image, colour nanites blooming in eggshell white and aquamarine splashes over her baby-soft plating. Her optics, though, were yellow – the reflected orange light from his spark, he'd thought, until he closed his chamber and the distinctive colour remained.

Gradually, he calmed, and Wheeljack helped him to stand. He was met with the sight of Optimus stretched out on the med-berth, optics fixed on the tiny frame that curled upon his chest, over his spark. One servo rested beside her, one digit gently stroking her back. Tiny fists clenched, audial fins twitching in sleep.

Optimus glanced up as Ratchet approached. He smiled, and shuffled over, inviting Ratchet to lay with him.

“I'll go tell the others the good news,” Wheeljack said, and left them. “Don't worry, I won't bring 'em in just yet.”

Ratchet nodded, silent acceptance. He couldn't look away from Optimus.

“Come,” said the Last Prime, still smiling.

He patted the clear space on the berth, and reached up to the bundle in Ratchet's arms. “What will you call her?”

Ratchet stared down at his daughter once again. She blinked, baby optics focusing, mouth pursing.

“I... I don't know yet,” he said.

Optimus made a deep rumble within his chest. “May I see her?”

In answer, Ratchet placed her on his chest, beside her sister.

The two sparklings blinked, the dexter momentarily woken. The smaller of the two squeaked, tiny hands scrabbling against Optimus' windshield. Her fingers came up against her elder sister's side. The elder whined.

Ratchet clambered onto the berth, aches and leftover contractions making him feel twice his age. He tucked himself in beside Optimus, and propped himself up on his elbow, watching as the sparklings gradually settled down. “They're going to be a handful, hmph.”

Optimus' arm looped around his waist and squeezed. “I wouldn't doubt it.”

* * *

“So what are their names?”

The children sat on Ratchet's workbench, staring down at the new family on the med-berth. Team Prime gathered around the berth. Bulkhead laid a gentle hand on Ratchet's shoulder; Bumblebee crouched on Optimus' side as if to guard them. Wheeljack leant against the wall, grinning.

Raf had been the first to speak – in a hushed voice, as though he was loathe to break the atmosphere of peace and quiet that pervaded the medbay.

Ratchet glanced up at Optimus. “I'm not sure that we had decided.”

Arcee sat carefully on the very end of the berth, smiling at the sparklings as they explored Optimus' chest. “They've got quite the difference in personality already, haven't they?”

Although sparklings very quickly became mobile after birth, capable of crawling at mere joor old, neither was quite there yet. The little dexter seemed content to lay on her back and stare up at the giant figures all around her, devoid of any fear. By contrast, her younger sister was far more active, getting around primarily by grabbing at protruding edges of Optimus' armour and pulling herself across his chassis.

“They sure have,” said Ratchet dryly. He'd woken up that morning to a squalling tantrum from the younger sister. She certainly seemed to have inherited his temper.

Optimus lifted his servo and prevented the determined explorer from falling off his chassis. “Regarding names, I may have a few ideas.”

The little dexter turned her head and regarded him from blue, blue optics. Optimus covered her small body with his hand. Her optics narrowed and fluttered shut, turning her face into his wrist.

She was the elder, by just under ten minutes according to Wheeljack's estimates. Like her sister, she was primarily blue and white, though her blue was a deeper, warmer colour closer to Optimus' own, and her plating was shot through with dashes of vivid crimson. She exhibited the dexter build already, with long legs and large pedes, shoulders whose plating had already begun to flare grandly out and upward in mimicry of her carrier's.

“Pandora,” said Optimus, aloud, in English. “All gifts.”

Ratchet translated the name into his native Protihexi, and Optimus' Iaconian, and opened a new folder in his memory banks. He smiled. “It's illustrative, certainly.”

“As intended,” Optimus rumbled, a hint of a smile playing about his mouth. He enfolded them all into his arms and asked, “Have you any ideas?”

Ratchet looked down at their daughters. The as-yet-unnamed younger sister chose that moment to roll over onto her back, a little too close to Optimus' side. Ratchet swore and caught her, replacing her beside her sister.

“Persephone,” he said. Optimus smiled his approval, as Ratchet had thought he might. It was a Dynastic name, derived from a healer of singular skill and bravery.

Persephone screwed up her face and gave a tiny squeak. Ratchet stroked her helm. She grabbed for his fingers and clung on stubbornly, her EM field flickering with possessive ferocity. Beside her, Pandora stared, and reached out to copy her sister. Ratchet replied with a burst of loving amusement, wrapping his EM field around them both. 

His daughters, their daughters, safe and well and finally home. He buried his face against Optimus' shoulders and smiled, tired but full of joy.


End file.
